


Wakaba's Day Off

by TheConceptionist



Category: Spectrobes
Genre: Gen, I really don't know where I'm going with this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-10 07:47:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17421824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheConceptionist/pseuds/TheConceptionist
Summary: Wakaba, being stressed out by her job as a badge saleswoman, decides to take a day to herself. Antics ensue. Takes place parallel to Origins's plot.





	Wakaba's Day Off

Badges are a strangely lucrative business in the Nanairo system.

 

Of course, this was common knowledge for any fashion business there. It was a trend that had recently exploded on Kollin, quickly spreading throughout the system in a matter of years. Both normal people and huge clothing corporations began to try and cash in on the trend. The difference between people and corporations, however, is quality versus quantity.

 

Corporations tend to just slap a piece of art on some metal, barely engrave it, then call it quits and sell it. People, however, carefully design, engrave, and paint their badges before selling them. In itself, badge-making could be considered an art form. In vain of this, anybody on Kollin would say that Wakaba is a master artist.

 

Wakaba was a girl that sold badges in and around the capital of Kollin. She was easily the most popular individual badge-seller on the planet, maybe even in the entire system. Her wide variety of high-quality badges easily drew in tons of customers. She even managed to rent a shop location on the upper floors of the Nanairo Planetary Patrol’s headquarters, much to the joy of the soldiers and various other personnel working there.

 

However, even with multiple shop locations around the capital, she never intended to hire any other workers; only herself. Thus, she had to create a schedule. She took the first and last weeks of every month to close her shop and manufacture badges, with the only automated process being the engraving of the badge; all other steps were done by her own hands. Of course, this led to errors, but they were few and far between. For the rest of the days in the month, she would open her shop in one of the various locations, with only herself working the stand. This process was highly inefficient and unconventional, but she didn’t want to (or think to) expand her business to the point of becoming fully automated.

 

Wakaba’s strange schedule, however, made her presence more of an event. Customers got excited whenever her shop opened in a location near them, and they knew she had badges in stock, so they’d flock and spend hundreds of thousands of Gura on badges. This excitement was also enhanced by the fact that Wakaba had no clear-cut order of locations. She could be in the same location for months or switch to a new site every month. She also never announced her presence; she simply landed wherever she had rented out a spot to land her shop and set it up.

Wakaba’s ship was just large enough for all the things she needed to do in it: manufacturing, selling, and living on the ship. She used space as effectively as she could, although this isn’t saying much. She generally lived off of fast food, but exercised enough to counter any weight gain, leaving her frame relatively slim. 

 

Her variety of badges to sell was mostly thanks to the Spectrobes, creatures of the light that were wielded by one of a pair of NPP officers. She often talked to the girl of the pair, Jeena, about the creatures. Jeena’s partner, Rallen, was the one to wield the Spectrobes, but Jeena was the one supplying pictures of the creatures for reference to Wakaba so she could make badges. Wakaba always assured Jeena that the new badges would be available as soon as possible and, lo and behold, there were new badges in her next cycle.

 

With the constant addition of new badges every few months, business was kept fresh and booming. However, after years of happily doing business, Wakaba was finally beginning to get stressed over her work…

 

**一一一**

 

“Thanks, have a good day!” A customer walked out of Wakaba’s shop, a shiny new Senpu badge between their fingers and a smile on their face.

 

“You too,” Wakaba replied cheerily. After making sure that nobody else was approaching the shop in the dark of the night, she maneuvered around the stands of badges and shut the large door to the shop of her ship. With the loud  _ bang _ of the door hitting the floor, she released a large sigh. Today had been a busy day, along with part of a busy cycle. While she had definitely sold out of some badges before, she had never sold out of this many in a single cycle, and it was certainly burdening to have to deal with so many customers in a matter of weeks.

 

Wakaba trudged further into her ship, going through a narrow hall and making a sharp turn into the washroom. She shuffled inside and leaned on the edge of her sink, looking into the mirror mounted above it. Her black and blue beanie was close to falling off of the back of her head, revealing most of her bright green hair, matching her eyes of the same color. In the rush, by some miracle, none of her own various pins and badges had come unclipped from various spots on her person; her faded teal shirt, her navy blue pants along with the extra pair she had tied around her waist, her beanie; even her white gloves had a few pins stuck to them.

 

She slid herself out of the bathroom and further down the hallway, entering the cockpit of her ship. Various bits and pieces of trash were strewn about the floor, but not enough to hinder anything or be some form of hazard. The cockpit was much larger than that of a plane, being able to serve as a large room in and of itself. In the corner was a large machine that she used for engraving the badges that she sold. Beside it was a long workbench, with containers of various substances and blank badges scattered across it.

 

Wakaba walked past all of her work materials and flopped into the pilot’s seat, fiddling with the onboard computer. After pulling up a holographic keyboard and punching in some letters and numbers, a light behind the dashboard of the ship lit up, projecting a communicator screen in front of Wakaba that was filled with static. A few seconds passed before a clear image of a man in an NPP uniform picked up the line.

 

“This is the Nanairo Planetary Patrol, how may I-- oh, hey Wakaba,” the man recited before recognizing the person on the other end, “you looking for clearance to land your shop again?”

 

Wakaba adjusted her beanie atop her head before responding. “Uh, not this time, Henry. I actually wanted you to patch me through to Jeena, if you could.” Her cheery facade was slipping, as she sounded rather tired in her voice.

 

Henry nodded, leaning off-screen and audibly typing something into the computer. After a few moments had passed, he grunted and leaned back over to look at Wakaba. “Sorry, she… isn’t available at the moment. She hasn’t come back here for at least a week. Same for Rallen.”

 

Wakaba leaned forward in her chair, a concerned look spread across her face. “Do you know where she is at all, or can you at least contact her yourself?”

 

“Uhh… sometimes? Those two are off in a system we don’t have on record, and the signal is spotty from here to there. Must be really far off.” Henry shrugged. “Really sorry, Wakaba. Anything else you need?”

 

Wakaba moved to hang up the call, but paused and eventually retracted her arm. “Advice, I guess. Work is starting to weigh on me. So many people to deal with… I’m running out of energy, man. You got anything for that?”

 

“I, uh…” Henry looked past the camera and pondered this for a moment. “You could always just take a break. Just take a week to yourself, or even just one day to clear your head. It’s not like you have a real schedule anyway; nobody will know you’re gone.”

 

“I guess that’s true,” Wakaba replied. She thought on this for a moment, a smile spreading back onto her face. “...Yeah, that sounds right. I’ll just take a day to myself and do whatever! Thanks, Henry!”

 

Henry nodded and smiled. “No problem! Have a good day!” A second later, the communication ended and Wakaba was alone on her ship once again. She stood from the pilot’s chair and walked back out into the ship hall, this time turning the opposite direction of the bathroom. This led to the living quarters of the ship.

 

The living quarters were fairly small, but enough to house Wakaba on her lonesome. Inside was a full-size bed in the corner of the room with its right side against the wall, and a nightstand to its left. The space between the foot of the bed and the wall was taken by a wardrobe that housed Wakaba’s lacking amount of clothing.

 

On the nightstand was a mannequin head, with its neck screwed into the nightstand itself so it couldn’t move. Wakaba removed her beanie and placed it onto the head of the mannequin, revealing her hair to be a frizzled mess underneath it. She then slowly walked over to the wardrobe and opened it. Inside were two pairs of pajamas, as well as three extra sets of clothes identical to the set she was wearing, pins included.

  
After taking a few minutes to switch out of her clothing and into one of the sets of baggy pajamas, Wakaba grabbed onto the foot of the bed and flung herself onto the mattress, then bringing her legs up to put them under the covers. She heaved a heavy sigh of relief at the day finally being over.  _ Tomorrow _ , she thought,  _ is going to be all me. One day of lost sales won’t be the end of me. _ With that thought, Wakaba drifted to sleep, unaware of the interesting day to come.


End file.
